For more than 10 years, I have been trying to renovate my house, but cracks in the walls kept appearing, and no matter how many times I fixed the doors, they would not shut properly. The problem was that three-quarters of the house sat on sand and one-quarter on clay. The pylons had only been placed about six inches into the ground, and there is even a spring beside the house!
For 10 years, I tried to fix the problem from the top down. I failed, and it cost me tens of thousands of dollars. Eventually, I realised there was no way around it. I had to dig out the foundations and rebuild from the ground up. I have now finished the work and even re-landscaped the backyard after all the mess we made. In the end, it cost me about $4000, including the landscaping. I could not help but think, “Why didn’t I just do this from the beginning?”
It is the same with our lives and faith. The things that bring the greatest long-term benefit are often the very things we resist the most. Yet many times they are simpler than we imagine.
We must always build on good foundations. Trying to retro-fix things from the top down rarely works for long. So what are the foundations? Love God, love people, and go make disciples. These truths never change, yet they are often the very things we resist the most. In doing so, we rob ourselves of much of the fruit, joy, and blessing God intends for us.
On another interesting note, while re-landscaping, a professional landscaper explained how to sow my new lawn. He told me to spread the seed thick and wide because, in his 30 years of experience, at best only about 25 percent would grow. He also told me to resist mowing it too soon. Let it get strong and tall before my first mow. Immediately I thought of the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1–23; Mark 4:1–20; Luke 8:1–15).
That means we should not become discouraged when sharing Christ or trying to make disciples. We often give up too quickly. Even Jesus taught that not every seed would bear fruit. The answer is not to stop sowing; it is to sow more seed and faithfully nurture what does grow.
If we never tell anyone about Christ, we guarantee failure. But as we share more often, we grow more confident, more faithful, and more effective. A lawn only needs some of the seed to grow and spread before it eventually fills the whole yard. In the same way, God can use faithful disciples who multiply to reach far more people than we could ever imagine.
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